rituals – Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics
An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:50:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 Pilgrimage Through Holy Weekhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/30/march-26-2010-pilgrimage-through-holy-week/5979/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/30/march-26-2010-pilgrimage-through-holy-week/5979/#disqus_threadFri, 30 Mar 2012 18:35:57 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=5979Read an excerpt from IN THE COMPANY OF CHRIST: A PILGRIMAGE THROUGH HOLY WEEK by Benedicta Ward. More →

From the fourth century until today, Christians have created things to do together, rituals, in order to experience for themselves the great simplicity of redemption. These rituals are meant to recur, they are the stones of an archway which, once built, is there to use, to go in and out by prayer and so to find pasture. We do not want to be rebuilding a different-shaped arch, however entrancing, but to use what we have, what we are used to, in order to enter into the real business of prayer. So the ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, are there to be used, and this is a physical matter, a use of the body, so that all of ourselves will know. Intellectual apprehension of truth is all very well, and indeed for some it is enough; but for most of us, we live in a half-light, neither awake nor asleep, wanting to understand but not quite able to think it through; we need to be there to act it out, to participate. This is in no way an alternative or lesser kind of theologizing; by both ways we come to the central theme of redemption, the flesh-taking of Christ in which he returns to the Father and takes us unto the dynamic life of the Trinity which is the ultimate procession, and it is by physical processions that we can learn to become part of that reality.

The last days of Holy Week provide a simple way of allowing the body, the flesh, to learn theological truth by doing and being in earthly processions. Palm Sunday’s procession is about how to do the basic human thing — to walk, to take one step, just to be able to do the next step, and to remain with that doing, not seeing a much quicker way to get there by a bus, a train, a ship, a plane, which are quicker than our feet; we are always dashing through in order to be somewhere else, and when we are there then we think we will begin. But the procession is a slow, corporate event, the pace set by the weakest and slowest. Like growing, a procession is something done for its own sake, and in doing it we are becoming what we are not, going by a way we do not understand, for a purpose that is God’s, not ours, in ways that are too simple for our sight. We will never of course be ready on earth for the full “procession” which is the dynamism of the life of love which is the Trinity, since we are broken human beings, with limited sight; but given our consent, God can lead us by the flesh he created, to understand and apprehend the image of God which he placed within us. All that is needed is to give a minute assent, however impatient and grudging, and then just to do it. A procession can be seen as a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In the same way that we read through the letter of the Scriptures to the inner truth, so we understand more by walking than we know; it is the work and gift of God.

Meditation upon the processions of Holy Week is rightly undertaken at its commencement. In the early church, for the first three days of Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the custom was to have only plain readings from Scripture; later, what was read each day were the separate accounts of the Passion. Then as now, these were days of stillness and silence when all were to be prepared, emptied, turned towards the Saviour’s great work. After the signs we gave ourselves during Lent of being ready to become empty by giving things up and therefore more free, now that desire will be put to the test. There is nothing now to be done or thought. It is the end of Lent, the pause before the great mystery of Redemption. In this pause, it is possible to reflect on these three processions, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter night, as ways into the great procession which is the life of Trinity, and this is not just for ourselves here and now. First we walk with so many others from the past, joined with them by our present actions. We receive life from the hands of the dead to live it out ourselves and pass it on to others, and that is true tradition. We are walking with our friends. And second, we do not do this for ourselves only, but for the whole of creation; insofar as one small portion of humanity which is us assents to the love of God, so the whole of creation becomes part of redeeming work.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/30/march-26-2010-pilgrimage-through-holy-week/5979/feed/1 Religious Pilgrimagehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/11/04/november-4-2011-religious-pilgrimage/9863/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/11/04/november-4-2011-religious-pilgrimage/9863/#disqus_threadFri, 04 Nov 2011 20:52:00 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=9863"Pilgrimages are undertaken because people want to move beyond their normal, mundane life," says Virginia Raguin, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross. Raguin is also the curator of a traveling exhibit on pilgrimages in Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. More →

VIRGINIA RAGUIN (Professor of Art, College of the Holy Cross): Pilgrimages are undertaken because people want to move beyond their normal, mundane life. They can be a one-day pilgrimage, from one town to another town, on a particular feast day. They can be a weekend. They can be actually years.

In the past, pilgrimage really was vital in Christian religion, certainly in Muslim and in Buddhist. Only Islam requires the pilgrimage — the Hajj — so that it is one of the five pillars of Islam. However, that is nuanced: only if you are financially and physically able.

On pilgrimage, people experience the same activities; therefore, it produces a sense of camaraderie, a sense of sharing.

Constantly we see that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So that all three religions use handy objects to help focus people’s thoughts; and prayer beads are some of the most ubiquitous. Prayer rugs that were brought by people, especially on the Hajj, where they could kneel down and then pray during the days of their journey. Qur’ans, small ones, were often carried with people.

One of the most common kinds of souvenirs is absolutely the simplest: stones. Stones or dirt from the ground. People who have been on the Hajj and who have engaged in one of the rituals, which is the “stoning of Satan,” invariably they bring some of those stones home with them. You also have Muslims with clay from Karbala, or other holy places, pressed together, that they then use in prayer.

Although the doctrinal core of these religions differ, the practices that they use to help focus believers onto what is important, they are the same.

Often in these three religions, you have an experience of circumambulation, walking around a site. The Ka’ba is circumambulated during the performance of the Hajj; people walk seven times around this small building. Circumambulation, either of mountain or of a stupa or another holy site in the Buddhist religion is one of the most common ways of making a pilgrimage. And, for Christians, certainly they’ll circulate around the icons sometimes, or the statue, that they are venerating. People look for this physical activity that helps them find an interior focus. Physical hardship can be transformative. One of the things the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Muslims constantly come back to is humility. They make the effort, but God grants the grace.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/11/04/november-4-2011-religious-pilgrimage/9863/feed/7 Qur’an Disposalhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/16/september-16-2011-quran-disposal/9519/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/16/september-16-2011-quran-disposal/9519/#disqus_threadFri, 16 Sep 2011 18:58:23 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=9519“When Muslims want to respectfully dispose of a text of the Qur’an that is no longer usable, we will burn it,” says Imam Jihad Turk, director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California. More →

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Disposing of a sacred text: In Judaism, when a Torah becomes too worn to use any longer it is reverently buried. Some Christians do the same thing with the Christian Bible. And Muslims? You may be surprised to hear that some Muslims say a Qur’an should be burned. We talked with Jihad Turk, director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California.

IMAM JIHAD TURK (Director of Religious Affairs, Islamic Center of Southern California): The Qur’an as an idea is something that is in the hearts and the minds of the believers and followers of Islam. It’s not the actual text. It’s not the piece of paper. Muslims don’t worship the text of the Qur’an or destroy the Qur’an.

Although it’s not sacred or something that’s worshiped, it is considered the representation of the sacred word of God, and given that it’s a representation of it, a Muslim would want to make sure that it’s treated respectfully.

When Muslims want to respectfully dispose of a text of the Qur’an that is no longer usable, we will burn it. So if someone, for example, in their own private collection or library had a text of the Qur’an that was damaged or that was in disrepair, so the binding was ruined, etc., or it got torn, they might bring it by to the Islamic Center and ask that someone here dispose of it properly if they were unsure how to do that. And what I’ll do is I’ll take it to my fireplace at home and burn it there in the fireplace. So I sort of take the pages out and then burn it to make sure that it gets thoroughly charred and is no longer recognizable as script.

In the Islamic tradition, it’s the Arabic that is really considered the authentic, original scripture. The very early scripture of the Qur’an—when it was first collated and put into a binding there were a lot of loose papers around, and this was about 1,400 years ago. The first companions of Muhammad, led under the leadership of the third caliph, Uthman, actually instructed the followers to take all of those pages and burn them, and so that kind of set the precedent as to what should be done. If you burn it, it destroys the word, the ink on the paper. It’s no longer perceptible, and so therefore it is no longer scripture. It’s just ashes at that point.

ABERNETHY: For Muslims, according to Jihad Turk, when done with the proper intent the burning of a damaged or worn out Qur,an is in no way disrespectful. The specific paper and ink may be gone, he says, but the sacred word of God endures.

RABBI SHARON BROUS (IKAR, Los Angeles): Passover is the centerpiece of the Jewish moral imagination and the Jewish collective memory, and so every aspect of Jewish liturgy, of the calendar, of the Jewish experience in the world is in some way rooted in the experience of the Yetziat Mitzrayim, of the Exodus from Egypt.

Our job as a community is to position ourselves spiritually, to prepare ourselves spiritually so that we’re ready when we go into our individual homes on Seder night, that we’re ready to receive the inspiration that will flow. The cleansing of our homes is part of the cleansing of the soul. This is part of the spiritual preparation.

We live in this very paradoxical relationship with slavery that’s enunciated through the pages of the Haggadah, the book that we use to guide us through the Seder experience, in which we both articulate that we are free and we’re celebrating our freedom but also we are still slaves and maybe next year we’ll be free. We recognize that our freedom is intimately linked to the freedom of those who are most vulnerable in our society today, and we can’t be fully free until they are also free.

Matzo is the most powerful food substance there is. We hold it up at the beginning of the Seder and say Halach Ma’anya, “this is the bread of affliction,” this is the bread of poverty and it’s also the bread of freedom. When we share our resources, when we live from a place of abundance instead of from a mindset of only scarcity, when instead we say “come in and share this meal with me, share this bread with me,” so then it becomes the bread of freedom.

I think actually the symbols on the Seder plate are some of the most powerful ways of communicating what the essence of the Passover experience really is about. So we have the egg, which is the symbol of the possibility of something completely new entering into the world. We have the karpas, the greens, which is something that seems like it’s completely dead finding new life, and we dip it in salt water so we remember the tears that we shed during the time of our suffering and we remind ourselves that something beautiful and something new emerged from the depths of that suffering. There is the charoset, the sweet—it’s this sweet-tasting apple cinnamon mixture which actually comes to remind us of the bricks and mortar when we were slaves in Egypt, which I think is so interesting. There’s something about this sort of sweetness of being stuck in a life that you know you don’t want to stay in, but it’s comfortable because you’ve been there for a long time. And then on the other side there’s chazeret, the lettuce, which is a kind of bitter lettuce which comes to remind us that even once we’re in freedom there’s a kind of bitterness that comes with everything that’s unknown. And the shank bone, the symbol of the Paschal lamb. The idea of this is that freedom came to the Israelite people after the night that they were willing to go out and actually put the blood on the doorposts of their home and say, “I’m ready to take part in my own liberation right now.”

All of the rituals around Passover are designed to shake us out of our complacency and basically awaken us to the memory of the experience from Egypt, so that it’s not only that we’re remembering a story that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents told, but we’re actually remembering it in our own human experience, that I remember walking from slavery to freedom because I was also there.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/15/april-15-2011-passover-themes/8602/feed/8 Rabbi Sharon Brous Extended Interviewhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/15/april-15-2011-rabbi-sharon-brous-extended-interview/8591/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/15/april-15-2011-rabbi-sharon-brous-extended-interview/8591/#disqus_threadFri, 15 Apr 2011 21:56:24 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=8591"The idea that it's possible to move from slavery to freedom and from darkness to light and from despair to hope—that is the greatest Jewish story every told." More →

]]>“The idea that it’s possible to move from slavery to freedom and from darkness to light and from despair to hope—that is the greatest Jewish story every told,” says Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles. Watch more of our interview with her on the meaning of Passover.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/04/15/april-15-2011-rabbi-sharon-brous-extended-interview/8591/feed/5 Japan: Humanitarian and Spiritual Responseshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/18/march-18-2011-japan-humanitarian-and-spiritual-responses/8401/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/18/march-18-2011-japan-humanitarian-and-spiritual-responses/8401/#disqus_threadFri, 18 Mar 2011 20:55:16 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=8401The widespread crisis in Japan is marked by ongoing relief efforts and acknowledgment of the impermanence of life. More →

]]>BOB ABERNETHY, host: Faith-based and international aid groups rushed to help victims of the catastrophes in Japan. It’s estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed by the massive earthquake and tsunami. Japanese officials say more than 450,000 are homeless and in need of supplies. Humanitarian efforts, however, have been severely complicated by radiation from four of the country’s nuclear reactors.

We get more from Dave Toycen, the president and chief executive officer of the Christian aid group World Vision Canada. We spoke to him by phone from Tokyo on Friday night (March 18). Dave, thanks so much for staying up so late to talk with us. Are you and the others doing relief work there, are you able to get to all the people who need help, and do you have the supplies you need to help them?

DAVE TOYCEN (President and CEO, World Vision Canada): Well, basically we do. We’re anticipating we’ll be raising somewhere between $10 and $20 million, so our team here has already spent, you know, a chunk of that because they know it’s coming. But of course we believe we’re going to be able to raise that amount of money, and of course that turns into supplies and things that we can provide here. So, yes, I am positive about that.

ABERNETHY: But you are able to, or the people who are in need are able to get help from you or from the government or from somebody else, right?

TOYCEN: Yes, generally so. My perception is, in the conversations we’ve had, what I’ve seen first hand, people are getting at least the basics of life. That means water, food on a daily basis, and most people now are in schools, gymnasiums, community centers, so that they are at least not out in the elements. It was minus four this morning with about ten, well, eight inches of snow.

ABERNETHY: What have you seen that moved you the most?

TOYCEN: Well, I think one of the things that moves me so much is in every one of these centers they have sheets of paper with people either saying yes, I’m alive and I’m at this location. The other ones that are even more poignant are the ones where you read where people are saying I am looking for my son, my daughter, do you know about them? And that always touches your heart. That just really, really touches your heart. And today I had a mother say to me, you know, this has been awful, but it’s my kids. The fact that my kids are alive, and children are precious because they remind us that life is about hope, and even our children in the midst of these difficult circumstances they still find the time to be happy and joyful. That’s humbling.

ABERNETHY: Dave, very quickly, we are almost out of time, but a lot of people are saying, well, we don’t need to give anything because Japan is a first-world country. It’s well organized. They don’t need as much help as perhaps people at other places and other disasters. How would you respond to them?

TOYCEN: Well, my first comment is yes, you’re right to a certain extent. They don’t need as much help. This is a first-world country. But, on the other hand, my experience is that most of us, or many of us at least, when somebody’s in trouble we have a sense we want to help out in some ways. And then when you think about, even I think of. say. Hurricane Katrina in the United States, how much Americans appreciated, at least that’s the feedback I got, when people from Canada and other places in the world came in and pitched in and gave, either volunteered or gave some money. So I think everybody has to make their choice, and we’re so pleased at World Vision. We’ve had so many people who want to step up and say we’re willing to help in Japan and send a message of hope.

ABERNETHY: Dave Toycen of World Vision Canada. Many thanks.

Faith groups around the world held prayer services this week for victims of the disasters. Meanwhile, some observers have spoken about the strong cultural and spiritual resources the Japanese have displayed as they deal with the catastrophe. Reverend Maggie Izutsu is an Episcopal priest who is also an expert on Asian bereavement rituals. She lived in Japan for many years and joins us now from Austin, Texas, where she leads the organization the Rite Source. Maggie, welcome.

REV. MAGGIE IZUTSU: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

ABNERNETHY: As you see the way the Japanese people are responding to these tragedies, what stands out for you?

IZUTSU: I guess one of the things that my mind keeps going to is how they don’t ask the question “why me?” They’re not consumed with wondering what put them in harm’s way. They know they’re in harm’s way. They are very attentive to their surroundings, and they have a great reverence and fear of nature.

ABERNETHY: And so a disaster is just part of life? Multiple disasters are just part of life? You accept it and get on with things—pick up and continue you life?

IZUTSU: Yes, I believe so. I think that partly comes from their Shinto tradition of this reverence for nature and their understanding of the vicissitudes of nature and capriciousness of nature. It’s also part of their Buddhist tradition that understands that all things are impermanent and things are subject to change, and they don’t see themselves as entitled to good fortune all the time or even good fortune ever. Of course, they seek that and they strive for that, but that’s not their focus.

ABERNETHY: We’ve seen a little disruption—frustrations of trying to get supplies and things. But, in general, the images have been of people who are very orderly and very respectful of each other. Talk about that a little bit.

IZUTSU: Yes, well, I think that may come from very early training that is part and parcel of the Confucian tradition, which was imported from China, that seeks to make every opportunity in life—in daily life, secular life, as well as spiritual life or, more pointedly, religious life—an opportunity for moral self-cultivation, and it starts at a very early age. For instance, my son in a three-year-old’s class at nursery school’s teacher would talk about how she went home every night to try to understand how she could better inculcate a sense of little Johnny’s effect on little Tommy in terms of how he was behaving. So that sensibility of commiseration or empathy or understanding how our behavior affects other people starts there at a very early age.

ABERNETHY: And now there is the grieving and the rituals that are available, too, for helping people through that. What are the most important of those?

IZUTSU: The Buddhist tradition, as well as the new religions, have these very elaborate, very elongated memorial services—a sequence of memorial rites that go on literally ad infinitem, and they’re a wonderful occasion for families and friends of the deceased to come together at sporadic intervals to remember the deceased and share in the support that they can offer each other in that process. It also serves, I think, as a context for remembering the relative nature of our own egos, and the place that we have in this vast line of our ancestors and hopefully the progeny that will yet be coming, and to remember our place in society, and that also becomes a context for remembering that behaving well is a very important attribute of living.

ABERNETHY: Reverend Maggie Izutsu of the Rite Source in Austin, Texas. Many thanks.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/18/march-18-2011-japan-humanitarian-and-spiritual-responses/8401/feed/1 Holy Weekhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2006/04/07/april-7-2006-holy-week/5945/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2006/04/07/april-7-2006-holy-week/5945/#disqus_threadFri, 07 Apr 2006 19:56:17 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=5945Read an excerpt from IN THE COMPANY OF CHRIST: A PILGRIMAGE THROUGH HOLY WEEK by Benedicta Ward. More →

]]>Read an excerpt from IN THE COMPANY OF CHRIST: A PILGRIMAGE THROUGH HOLY WEEK by Benedicta Ward (Church Publishing, 2005):

From the fourth century until today, Christians have created things to do together, rituals, in order to experience for themselves the great simplicity of redemption. These rituals are meant to recur, they are the stones of an archway which, once built, is there to use, to go in and out by prayer and so to find pasture. We do not want to be rebuilding a different-shaped arch, however entrancing, but to use what we have, what we are used to, in order to enter into the real business of prayer. So the ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, are there to be used, and this is a physical matter, a use of the body, so that all of ourselves will know. Intellectual apprehension of truth is all very well, and indeed for some it is enough; but for most of us, we live in a half-light, neither awake nor asleep, wanting to understand but not quite able to think it through; we need to be there to act it out, to participate. This is in no way an alternative or lesser kind of theologizing; by both ways we come to the central theme of redemption, the flesh-taking of Christ in which he returns to the Father and takes us unto the dynamic life of the Trinity which is the ultimate procession, and it is by physical processions that we can learn to become part of that reality.

The last days of Holy Week provide a simple way of allowing the body, the flesh, to learn theological truth by doing and being in earthly processions. Palm Sunday’s procession is about how to do the basic human thing — to walk, to take one step, just to be able to do the next step, and to remain with that doing, not seeing a much quicker way to get there by a bus, a train, a ship, a plane, which are quicker than our feet; we are always dashing through in order to be somewhere else, and when we are there then we think we will begin. But the procession is a slow, corporate event, the pace set by the weakest and slowest. Like growing, a procession is something done for its own sake, and in doing it we are becoming what we are not, going by a way we do not understand, for a purpose that is God’s, not ours, in ways that are too simple for our sight. We will never of course be ready on earth for the full “procession” which is the dynamism of the life of love which is the Trinity, since we are broken human beings, with limited sight; but given our consent, God can lead us by the flesh he created, to understand and apprehend the image of God which he placed within us. All that is needed is to give a minute assent, however impatient and grudging, and then just to do it. A procession can be seen as a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In the same way that we read through the letter of the Scriptures to the inner truth, so we understand more by walking than we know; it is the work and gift of God.

Meditation upon the processions of Holy Week is rightly undertaken at its commencement. In the early church, for the first three days of Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the custom was to have only plain readings from Scripture; later, what was read each day were the separate accounts of the Passion. Then as now, these were days of stillness and silence when all were to be prepared, emptied, turned towards the Saviour’s great work. After the signs we gave ourselves during Lent of being ready to become empty by giving things up and therefore more free, now that desire will be put to the test. There is nothing now to be done or thought. It is the end of Lent, the pause before the great mystery of Redemption. In this pause, it is possible to reflect on these three processions, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter night, as ways into the great procession which is the life of Trinity, and this is not just for ourselves here and now. First we walk with so many others from the past, joined with them by our present actions. We receive life from the hands of the dead to live it out ourselves and pass it on to others, and that is true tradition. We are walking with our friends. And second, we do not do this for ourselves only, but for the whole of creation; insofar as one small portion of humanity which is us assents to the love of God, so the whole of creation becomes part of redeeming work.